In Memoriam - Takashi Shimura

Toshiro Mifune is rightly celebrated as a lion of the Japanese and even the world's cinema. But for me the true hero of Japanese film is the honourable Takashi Shimura. He must have belonged to an earlier world of stagecraft to be able to communicate so much with the slightest twitch of his odd, plastic face. Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Stray Dog are only perhaps the hightest points of a majestic range of roles and beings. For me he is one of the immortals of art film, one of that select few who truly inhabit a role, mould themselves to it and say more with a glance than most of us could muster in pages of words.